November 10, 2013

AN AWFUL LOT OF SENIOR OFFICERS SEEM TO BE GETTING THE BOOT, LATELY: The Hill: Report: Two U.S. admirals implicated in Navy bribery probe. “Two United States admirals, including the Navy’s top intelligence officer, were placed on temporary leave and stripped of their access to classified materials on Friday after being implicated in a widening probe into a Naval bribery scandal. . . . They have not, however, been charged with a crime or service violation, and there’s no indication they leaked classified information. The two retain their ranks as the probe continues.”

The matter seems not to be whether there is reasonable cause for all these flag-rank officers to be relieved, but why, exactly, is it being done at the pace we are seeing? It can mean only that:

A. Previous administrations overlooked personal vices as long as an officer's professional competence was maintained, or,

B. This administration is taking advantage of such pecadilloes to purge the Old Guard and put in the New Guard, meaning officers who promotions and future career paths will depend less on their professional military skills than on their personal loyalty to the regime. I guarantee that there is no shortage of such officers, as D.D. Eisenhower recognized in another context when he was president.

I've been starting to believe the "officer purge" meme, but some of the comments here have me rethinking. It's not at all impossible that the current senior office corps is crawling with failure. It's not unprecedented. Look how desperately Lincoln cast about for one *one* general who'd even understand what he was getting at, let alone execute it competently. Senior military leadership is hard. The Wellingtons, Nelsons and Ikes are RARE, and those who have risen above their level of ability aren't. While I have no love at all for Obama and his policies, I'm actually willing to believe that this is a competency-based purge, and that some have been cought with their hands in the cookie jar, unbelievably stupid as that would be.

Well, someone has to say it --Obama would've fired all three of your examples. Ike with his secretary, Wellington was notorious for mistresses, even accused of bedding his rivals' and even an enemy commander's mistresses (was blackmailed at one point by one of the ladies), and Lord Nelson was open, to his wife's chagrin, with his affair with the wife of a British officer whom Nelson kept on foreign duty at Gibraltar. None of them would've been around to defeat Hitler or Napoleon either one. Trafalgar, Waterloo, Normandy, all won by religious-gibberish spouting adulterous f**ktards.

In fact, it's no great stretch of the imagination to consider that among the voices calling for the cashiering on moral-turpitude grounds of Ike, Nelson, and Wellington, the loudest and most insistent would be from Hitler & Von Rundstedt, Admirals Villeneueve & Cisternas, and Napoleon Bonaparte & Marshal Ney.

"Military leadership didn't acquit itself in Afghanistan or Iraq well, spent trillions of dollars, and had little to show for all of the effort and sacrifice...When the admin considered military action, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs expressed his concerns with it; the President decided to pursue a military course of action, and the military moved out smartly (of course it was a hot mess shortly afterwards)."

So you're saying the leader that we need to cashier most of all is the Commander-in-Chief?

Look, I will not keep harping here, because it is obviously falling on deaf ears of people who are going to believe what they want to believe. FWIW I am an active duty army officer with 23 years of service. And a long time Instapundit reader. I will leave the thread with this.

1. If you believe in effective, efficient government, you should be happy that senior military officers are being fired. Military leadership didn't acquit itself in Afghanistan or Iraq well, spent trillions of dollars, and had little to show for all of the effort and sacrifice. The fact that more officers aren't being pushed out should be of concern to people who care about national defense in this forum. See recent writings of Thomas Ricks, Max Boot, who argue essentially the same thing as I am stating with this.

2. Most of the leaders referenced in all of this "purge" stuff have been relieved for misconduct. It should be alarming to readers here not the fact that they are being relieved, but that in fact there are this many senior military leaders acting like f*cktards. As an Army officer and combat veteran I am disgusted with it, and it is "good riddance" as far as I am concerned.

3. Lieutenant General Boykin is a persona non grata within the military, and has been for almost ten years, since he wrote a tell all book and cashed in on his career post military. Most people in uniform who are not of the holy roller set regard him as a disgrace. Rightfully so in my opinion. His piece in WND was ridiculous.

4. Critics like Boykin and Vallelly are essentially upset with the decision to rescind "don't ask don't tell" and allow gays to openly serve, that is where most of their criticism and disdain for the President's military policies are coming, it is religious based. As I have written, I am a combat veteran. I will deploy anywhere in the world with the Army, it is the best, most lethal Army in the world bar none. We are better off with Boykin sitting on his fat, semi-literate prejudiced ass on the sidelines criticizing us than with him in uniform, leaving a slug trail in our hallways.

5. There are no major issues with civil military relations right now. When the admin considered military action, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs expressed his concerns with it; the President decided to pursue a military course of action, and the military moved out smartly (of course it was a hot mess shortly afterwards). This is exactly how civ mil relations are supposed to work.

6. Thats really all I got to give everyone here as food for thought. I think the "purge" meme is a tired inaccurate one, and reeks of cocooning. Cheers!

...for just a few examples from a variety of publications. Yes there are several from WND. I know Infowars is pretty hyperbolic (i'd say, not without reason, but that's another story), but WND has a solid reputation for veracity, if not for bipartisan ecumenism. The WND URL that i read through seems to me bereft of any hot noise that would cause the trivialization --maybe someone could point out the flaws in this piece:

There was an article this spring about feckless officers at ricks.foreignpolicy.com Too many years of looking the other way when it comes to prostitution in foreign ports. Those same guys, not coincidentally, are rotten back at home too.

I find the paranoia on display here to be a bit surprising. If anything, based on the performance of the military leadership in the last 12 years, people should be wondering why more, not less, senior officers are not being forced out.

If Obama really was a crypto-Muslim and/or an agent working for the Muslim Brotherhood and/or working for Iran and/or working for Putin, then what would he have done differently?

In my opinion, there's nothing he'd have done differently and there's nothing he's done that a foreign agent aiming to hurt the USA wouldn't have done.

In fact, there are virtually no instances of this Administration's policies aiding our allies or strengthening our economy or national security, but there are dozens of policies that have harmed our allies an our economy and our national security.

He might not be a crypto-Muslim or an paid agent of enemies of the USA and the Free World; at best, he may only be a fellow traveler, a person deeply sympathetic to the Left and secretly committed to bringing the West down a notch and empowering the Third World - even if that means aiding Iran and Russia and China.

Of course, none of this surprises me - or many others on the iRght: Obama's bio - from the time he was born to the time he was elected POTUS is filled with deep connections to leftists who have long promoted the very things Obama has done:

WRIGHTKHALIDIAYERS, FM DAVISEDWARD SAIDTHE NEW PARTYACORNSEIUCHARLES W FREEMANFARRAKHANPFLEGERTHE CRCC AND THE DCP AND ALINSKYAND SO ON...

So for me and others who recognized what these connections meant, there have been no surprises from Obama - not even firing almost 200 Pentagon Brass, an unprecedented attack on our military's leadership.

The military is an authoritarian structure that because of its arcane nature is highly resistant to civilian oversight. It also spends a lot of money. Given those two facts, is it any wonder that corruption in the higher ranks might flourish?

Ask a veteran who served long enough to get a sense of the place and you'll find that the impression left by many senior officers isn't dedication but self-indulgence, abetted by hopeful toadys. The current 'purge' may be nothing more than the administration substituting their crooks for the old bunch of crooks.

The Night of the Long-Knives is happening, just in slow-motion.The officer-corps is being stripped of any possible opposition to the imposition of Martial Law, and the wholesale violation of Posse Comitatus.

Hypothetical: since bribery could be almost anything ("If you perform, I'll promote"), shouldn't our question be, is there something afoot that someone wants only his own hand-picked Naval Intelligence top brass to see?

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